The Video Game Protagonist You Became

Eighty-seven named heroes, each one a character you actually steered rather than watched. They show up here as the trailers their publishers cut, because a protagonist is easier to argue about once you have seen them move for a minute. A still picture flattens the difference between a plumber and a god of war. Thirty seconds of footage does not.

Getting on the ballot took a second outing. A character had to be playable in at least two mainline games of the same series, which measures whether anyone wanted to build around them again rather than how famous they got. That is why a few one-shot legends are missing and a few quiet workhorses are here. Each series sends exactly one name, so it is Link without Zelda, Kratos without Atreus, Solid Snake without the rest of the Snakes.

Anyone the player invents is out. If you typed the name, built the face, or chose from a menu of vault hunters, there is no fixed person to argue for, which keeps out the Dragonborn, the Elden Ring tarnished, and every trainer who has ever walked out of a Pokemon lab. Fighting game rosters go for the same reason. A roster is a cast, not a lead.

What is left is wider than any one console generation. A marshmallow who has never spoken sits next to a man who narrates his own misery in metaphors, and a paper rapper is in the same bracket as an assassin with a barcode. The only thing all of them share is that somebody designed a whole series to be seen from behind their shoulder.